


Tithonus 1

by somekindofseizure



Series: WTID Supplemental Reading [5]
Category: The Fall (TV 2013), The X-Files
Genre: WTID, tithonus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 14:39:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11511477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure





	Tithonus 1

She cradles the morphine pump loosely in her left hand and slips her right one, still warm, under the blanket.  Mulder wanted to stay but she insisted he go.  There’s no point fueling Kersh’s fire, giving him any more reason to split them up.  There was of course, no justifiable excuse for Mulder to be at her bedside.  They have never reported their couple status officially to the FBI.  She’s not even sure they’ve reported it officially to each other.  But her hand stays warm for hours after he holds it and that tells her what she needs to know.

When she hears the high heels, she assumes someone’s gotten the wrong room, and when she turns her head and sees Stella approaching the bed, she thinks she might be hallucinating, might have accidentally hit the button under her thumb.  

“What are you doing here?”

Stella kisses her forehead and sits to her left.  The morphine gun rolls onto the crinkly hospital sheets as Stella takes her hand.

“Are you high?” Stella asks with a standard touch of naughtiness, eyes on the little black button.

“No.  I’ve barely used it.”  This statement is not without a bit of regret.  There’s a part of her that keeps hoping she’ll need it so this would make some sense.  A shot in the gut should hurt more.

“You look exhausted,” she tells Stella to take the attention off herself.

“I just got off a plane. Mulder called me.”

Scully feels her eyes go wet immediately.  They’ve been brimming for days – Felig’s morbidness, his loneliness, her own confusions and ultimately, fear.   _What about love?_ she’d asked him and he’d made fun of her, made her into a silly schoolgirl for thinking it would last forever.  She hopes if it’s true, if he really was able to “take” death for her, that he took a little bit of her love with him as well. She has enough to go around.

Stella intertwines their fingers, careful not to disturb the IV, brings their joined hands up to her mouth. Scully can feel her lips trembling against their combined knuckles.  She playfully sets her teeth there instead, pretends she’s going to bite Scully.  She’s hiding.

“I thought you were dead,” she croaks, nose between Scully’s second knuckle and one of her own. Scully knows Stella’s not exaggerating. Mulder has a way of starting a conversation at the wrong end. _Scully-got-shot-long pause_ is how he would’ve put it, waited for Stella’s stunned _what_ to explain she was okay.  Stella swallows and her regular voice returns.  “I’m going to kill him when I see him.”

“I know that feeling.” 

Scully weighs the next part, doesn’t want to have to explain it all right now.

“I don’t really need to be here.”

“Then let’s go.  I’m at the Royalton.  There’s a fireplace.”

“I don’t know… how to ask them to leave.  I got shot yesterday.”

“Don’t ask.  Tell.”

Scully licks her lips and chews a bit of chapped skin there.  Stella reaches into her purse and hands her a luxe ginger-flavored lip balm to apply.  She looks more tired than Scully knew she could, blue eyes draining grey into the collar of her white silk shirt - somehow unwrinkled from the flight.  She seems to melt toward Scully’s bed, slowly lowering her head to the cot, drapes herself over Scully’s body.  The chair howls against the floor as she moves it closer.  Scully takes her right hand from under the blanket wraps both arms around Stella, clasps her hands between Stella’s shoulders where Stella’s breath bounces off her forearms.  Both her hands are warm now.

“I’ll tell them for you,” Stella says.  “In a minute.”

Scully knows the hospital limits this kind of power to wives and husbands and parents and children, people in official relationships with the patient.  But she says nothing about it to Stella.  She has found the power unofficial relationships to be most remarkable.

“Have you out by cocktail hour,” Stella says and Scully knows it is true.


End file.
